EVCCON 2014 - Day 0

Today was the last day of the free-for-all Smart Car build and the official start of registration and the opening evening reception for EVCCON 2014.

We got a lot of work done on the Smart today.  We ran the AC cable from the J1772 charging port in the right-rear fender up to the charger in the front of the car.

Here's the big whiteboard with our 4-point project plan.  Notice the multiple in/out of the motor and battery pack.  Luckily it only took one try to pull the gas engine.

In the "Insane Methods of Transportation" category, I give you two vehicles that showed up today.  This one is an electric motorcycle whose rear wheel is driven by a chain from a small DC motor under the seat.  The front wheel also has a chain drive, but only to operate a tiny disc brake.  It tops out around 20 mph but can almost float.

Here is the bike's motor controller.

And the battery pack.  It will eventually get a shroud to protect the rider from leg shocks!

 Back to the Smart car, I mounted the AVC2 charging controller board and wired it up to the J1772 charging port.

We zip-tied up the cabling under the body to the motor controller and J1772 charging port.

Here is the beautifully-crafted J1772 mounting bracket.  Unfortunately, the entire bracket will be covered up by the Smart bodywork, leaving just the hole for the charging plug where the gas filler used to be.

Here's the second insane form of transportation.  It's a highly-modified Power Wheels car, now featuring imminent death.

The back of the Smart now has a radiator and water pump for the motor cooling loop.

The battery pack has been populated with actual batteries and is now mounted under the car!

And the view of the battery pack from the front of the car.

Almost all of the attendees are here now and they've brought a great selection of home-converted electric cars.

This is Jack's new-today Nash Metropolitan.  The car was restored 21 years ago and looks like it just came out of the shop yesterday.  It is destined to be converted to electric sometime in the future.

This is the demonstration platform from the Hi Performance Electric Vehicle Systems (HPEVS) company.  This Porsche 911 has dual AC35 motors on the same shaft.

More electric cars, including Jack's Tesla Model S.

We enjoyed great catered food and an open bar for the reception dinner.  I'm spending most of my time telling people how much I'm enjoying my new life in Thailand and have found several people who want to come back with me.

The convention officially kicks off tomorrow morning with the keynote speech and the start of the sessions.  More tomorrow.

EVCCON 2014 Day -1

After waking up at 4 AM due to jet lag and unable to get back to sleep, I got a ride with Larry from the hotel and got to the EVTV.me workshop around 10 AM.  The growing crowd was elbow deep in the Smart car, focusing on completing the bottom balancing of the cells in the battery pack and installation of the motor and gearbox.

I worked on mounting the charger to the back side of the front bumper mount where the original radiator had been.  We also swapped out the incoming AC cable to a longer one that could reach all the way to the J1772 charging port in the back where the gas filler used to be.

We got the motor assembly mounted quite easily, and began test fitting the battery box under the frame.  After chiseling away a few extraneous mounting brackets, we found we had to remove two more brackets that were partially obscured by the motor assembly, so out it came.  The brackets came out and the motor went back in.  The battery box now fits beautifully, and battery team will be ready to install and wire up the batteries into the box and pop the box in tomorrow.

Dinner by consensus was at the Outback Steakhouse, an unusual location for me but hey I'm off the diet for this trip.  I did get a chicken caesar salad so it was almost OK.  The last time I was at an Outback Steakhouse, I had a severe reaction with my onion allergy.  Tonight I made it to the hotel just in time before the volcanic explosions began so I'm now 2 for 2 in 10 years, and that adds up to a big Nope for me and Outback Steakhouse from now on!

I'm managing to stay awake long enough to post this entry, then back to the shop tomorrow for another full day of the Smart car build.  I'm also hoping the GEVCU firmware guys show up soon, because I want to test my GEVCU app, a port of my PakTrakr electric car app, with a real piece of GEVCU hardware.

EVCCON 2014 Day -2

I flew from my new home in Thailand to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for the 4th annual Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention (EVCCON).  It's a gathering of electric car self-builders and we basically geek out for a week on sessions, discussions, hands-on, a parade through town, autocross, drag racing, dynamometer rating and generally getting liquored up and playing with high voltage.

I arrived on what I'll call Day -2 of the convention, thinking I was early but 6 guys had already arrived and started work on one of the shop projects, doing an electric conversion on a Smart car from a kit made by a German vendor whose name I can't remember right now.  The show doesn't officially start until the Tuesday evening reception and then the convention starts in earnest on Wednesday.  I signed up to be on the build team, I think there's about 15 of us who hope to get the car running as a pure electric car by next Monday.

I had the airport shuttle driver drop me off right at the EVTV.me workshop around 3 PM.  I dropped my suitcase and backpack in the corner and dove in.  The guys already had the 3 cylinder gas engine and gas tank out and were prepping the electric motor and reduction gearbox to go in.  The Smart car is tiny and looks even smaller with the rear end pulled out.

At 7 PM the 7 of us went to Jack's house for Sunday dinner, BBQ chicken.  I've given myself permission to go off my healthy, vegetarian diet for this trip, so I enjoyed the meal and the conversation.  Jack wrote up his weekly blog entry after the dinner, and I got a special mention for making the big trip from Thailand.

I was nodding asleep at the table around 9 PM so I got a ride back to the hotel and crashed.  More updates from Day -1 to follow.

Retiring from the workforce, Retiring the 914, Retiring the Blog

Life rarely turns out the way you expect.  After battling her Huntington's Disease for 15 years, my wife passed away last September.  This made me rethink my life and what I was going to do with myself now.  With 35 years of work and 17 years of school under my belt, I started thinking about retirement.  After years of careful planning, I'm in the position to call it quits in the working world and move somewhere cheap and exotic.  I've been to 46 countries around the world, so I have experience to draw from as to where I would go.

In the end, I chose Thailand.  Specifically, Hua Hin.  Hua Hin is a small city about 2 hours south-west of Bangkok by train.  It's right on the ocean, has a long white sand beach, mountains, golfing and all of the infrastructure I'll need to survive.  I'm learning Thai and intend to blend in as best I can.  If I get tired of Hua Hin, I'll pack my one suitcase, grab my guitar and laptop and drive my scooter to another town, or even farther away to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam or somewhere else exciting.

It's super cheap to live there, the food is great, the ocean is right there, the people are friendly, and did I mention it's super cheap?  I looked into the Retirement Visa process and luckily I meet all the criteria: Over 50 (14 days over as I type), enough money to sustain myself, and I don't have leprosy or syphilis   Bingo!  I'm putting the house on the market next week and have sold off or given away everything I own.  Except the 914.

The 914 is the big question in all of this.  I have a few choices:

- Ship it.  Shipping costs are actually reasonable; from my house to the dock in Bangkok for about $2000.  The problem is paying taxes and duties on arrival.  I've read that they can charge 3X the value of the car, and they get to pick whatever value they want.  So that is out.

- Sell it.  It's in great condition, but the range with the golf cart batteries is poor so nobody is going to pay me anywhere near the parts cost of the project, much less my time and blood and sweat.

- Store it.  This is my only realistic choice, but it just kicks the can down the road.  I will sell the batteries, likely to a golf cart shop in town, and then put the car in storage.  I don't want to pay the huge monthly fee at a mini-storage place, so I'm looking for someone who will let me put it in their locked garage for a small payment, potentially for years until I decide what to do next.  My classic car insurance requires it to be in a locked garage, so that's important.

So, this is likely the last blog entry, until something big happens in the world of the 914.  If I end up in an import-friendly country I can bring it in and fill it full of cheap lithium batteries.

I had a blast doing the conversion, driving the car, saving the world and spreading the word about electric vehicles.  I hope those who have found this blog have learned something that helped them with their own project.

I will trickle posts on my rarely-used Facebook account to let people know where I am in the world.  The welcome mat is always out for anyone who wants to come and visit.

Update: Everything is sold and I'm under 2 weeks left in California.  I haven't found an affordable place to store the 914 yet, so I'm working on solidifying the remaining leads.

Update #2: I have found a home for the 914 while I'm overseas, tucked under the wing of an airplane in a hanger at the Paso Robles airport.  Sleep well, Frau Geliebte.  I will try to bring you to me later, or collect you if I return to the US.

A Toyota RAV4 EV in the Wild

I was going to the post office in San Luis Obispo and noticed an SUV parked in the J1772 charging parking space.  I went over to check it out and found that it was one of the new Toyota RAV4 EVs!  The web site is full of information.  It's rated for 103 miles, which is a great jump over the Leaf and Volt.

They're still in limited distribution so this is still a rare car.  The cool thing is it has a Tesla battery pack and drive train.  This is the fruit of the Tesla / Toyota partnership.  Enjoy.

Atascadero Tesla Supercharger Station

I was driving down the main street of Atascadero last weekend and glanced over at the J1772 charging station at the RaboBank, as I always do, to see if anybody is charging up.  This time there was a beautiful green Tesla Model S parked there.  I pulled a U-turn and pulled in.  I talked with the owner Rita for a while.  She uses the car for work and does a lot of long-distance driving.

I then realized that the construction going on to the right of the charging station wasn't just a parking lot repair, it was a new Tesla Supercharger station!  I talked with the construction crew for a while.  They are the roving crew that installs the Supercharger stations and also worked on the electrical systems in the factory in Fremont.  Atascadero will be the only station between join the Hawthorne, Buellton and Gilroy stations as you go up the 101, so it will be a popular stopover for Model S owners.  The owner of the Subway shop across the street is going to see an upswing in business!'

This station will have 7 8 chargers, which is a good idea for what will be a very busy location.

Update:  I stopped by the location a week later and found that construction is almost complete, just the two at the end still need to be finished off.

These large enclosures hold the chargers that convert AC power from the grid to DC power to the cars.  Notice the numbering, this should tell us how many supercharger plugs are deployed so far, at 3 2 plugs per enclosure that's a maximum of 279 186 plugs but the last unit is not always fully populated.  The black plastic panel in the upper left corner I believe is to allow a radio signal to get in/out of the enclosure, allowing Tesla to talk with the chargers for remote diagnostics, software updates, etc.

This is the specification sticker on each enclosure.  It shows the unit can take almost every kind of AC grid power and convert it into lovely DC juice for the cars.  410 Volts DC at 210 Amps is 86,100 watts of power delivered directly to the battery pack.

And it goes in through this plug.  It's small, simple and elegant, not designed by committee like the original J1772 or its new big brother the J1772 Combo.

They've left stub-ups on the pad for two more enclosures or 6 4 outlets, good to spend a bit of money up front and plan for the future.

And finally this is the switchgear that connects the charger enclosures to the power grid.

Tesla Newport Beach Showroom

I had to go down to Los Angeles to pick up my Retirement Visa from the Thai embassy, and I stayed with a childhood friend in Newport Beach.  I looked up the Tesla showrooms in the area and found there was one just a few miles down the road, at the Fashion Island.

They had this gorgeous blue Model S in prominent display.  I walked around for a while when a salesman came up and we started talking about everything Tesla.  Turns out he had been in the job for 3 days!

They also had the rolling chassis, and a factory-perfect Roadster.

Dark metallic grey is my favourite color...